AlJazeera tells the truth about war: Faisal Bodi

Faisal Bodi, a senior editor for aljazeera.net writes in the Guardian today. He criticises the Western media for not reporting on important stories, and being blatantly biased in their reporting. He also mentions some stories that I indeed have not heard over the first week of the war.

Only hours before the Basra non-event, one of Iraq’s most esteemed Shia authorities, Ayatollah Sistani, had dented coalition hopes of a southern uprising by reiterating a fatwa calling on all Muslims to resist the US-led forces. This real, and highly significant, event went unreported in the west.

Earlier in the week Arab viewers had seen the gruesome aftermath of the coalition bombing of “Ansar al-Islam” positions in the north-east of the country. All but two of the 35 killed were civilians in an area controlled by a neutral Islamist group, a fact passed over with undue haste in western reports. And before that, on the second day of the war, most of the western media reported verbatim central command statements that Umm Qasr was under “coalition” control – it was not until Wednesday that al-Jazeera could confirm all resistance there had been pacified.

He also points out:

The British media has condemned al-Jazeera’s decision to screen a 30-second video clip of two dead British soldiers. This is simple hypocrisy. From the outset of the war, the British media has not balked at showing images of Iraqi soliders either dead or captured and humiliated.